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Henry Bessemer Henry Bessemer created the Bessemer process in 1850. This process consisted of adding blasts of air into molten iron in an attempt to remove impurities like carbon. The Bessemer process really took off around the 1880’s. More than 90% of American manufacturers used this method to make steel. Edwin Drake In the late 1850’s Edwin Drake was hired by an oil company. They had suspected there was oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Edwin Drake used a steam engine to power a drill to collect oil. This invention started an oil boom which spread quickly throughout many states. Willis Carrier Willis Carrier created the first air conditioning unit in 1902. However, it is not the same as what we use today. The first air conditioner was mainly used to control humidity. It worked by pushing air through a filter, the air was pumped over coils that were chilled using coolant. The air that was cooled was distributed through an open space by a fan. George Eastman In 1888 George Eastman invented the Kodak camera. His invention allowed people to easily take pictures and to have their film developed into prints. People were able to hold the camera in their hands while they took their pictures. It was also easy to carry which made it very practical. LightbulbIn 1876, Thomas Edison made history again. He improved the light bulb. Thomas Edison had put a lot of time and energy into this project and he had many failed attempts. He was not the first person to create a light bulb but he created the first reusable light bulb. Before him when the lights were turned off they would explode. This was because the filament used in the light bulb was not stable. Thomas Edison went through many different filaments but ended up with a carbon filament that worked very well. telephone Before the telephone was the harmonic telegraph, invented by Elisha Grey. It worked well but many were trying to improve it. One of these people was Alexander Bell. He worked hard and succeeded on the day of February 10, 1876 but with some “help”. Just days before Grey had created a water transmitter that worked very well but Bell had improved it so it worked almost perfectly. electricmotor In 1834, Thomas Davenport created the electric motor. There were other people who were tinkering with the concept but he got the credit for inventing and patenting the first electric motor. He started out with a small battery powered electric motor that he used for a small car. This led to bigger motors which also led to streetcars. Morse Code Samuel Morse made the first electronic Morse code around 1837. He used materials such as a home-made battery and old clock gears to make it. Morse had two other partners to help him, named Leonard Gale and Alfred Vail. When the Morse code first came out, it was a one wire system where the dips in the line had to be de-coded into numbers and letters, using the dictionary made by Morse. The year ahead, Morse improved his invention, making the dot-and-dash system. Where different numbers where used to represent a different letter of the alphabet and the ten different numbers. Typewriter In 1867, a man named Christopher Sholes invented the first useful typewriter, with assistance from Carlos Glidden and Samuel Soule. Sholes applied the ides of the printing press, made by Johann Gutenberg, but tried to make it easier and quicker to use. The first typewriter didn’t have much success, though. No more than 5,000 were sold. Men had trouble typing with it because their hands were naturally large and too worn to press the small keys. However, this typewriter later led to other inventions, like the computers we use today. Radio Gugliemo Marconi, an Italian physicist, perfected the first radio system that transmitted the Morse code over the Atlantic Ocean, in the early 1900s. After World War II, Marconi made some improvements to his invention, like reducing the amount of energy used to operate a radio. In 1943, the Supreme Court made the decision that Marconi in fact didn’t invent the first radio, but a man named Nikolai Tesla did. However, Marconi did make some huge improvement to the science and technology world today, just by his ideas and creations he made with the radio. In 1909, Marconi won the Noble Piece Prize in physics for the year, due to his scientific contribution.